alfagiulia
Member
I think in the best case you are being willfully ignorant. Best case for you I mean.Musk is not Jobs. No one has any idea how Tesla can become profitable. The opposite was the case with Jobs.
Tesla could already be profitable, comfortably profitable. Against odds and expectations, they built a highly rated and highly acclaimed car (Model S) and sold it with generous profit margins. But profitability, especially in the relative short term, was not the primary goal. The stated goal was and is to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles and sustainable transport in general. If Musk could have kept Tesla private, I'm sure he would have done so.
The catch 22 is that if Tesla had pursued profits and focused on making and selling a high margin vehicle, they would likely have been profitable but they would have failed in their stated mission. The reason so many traditional car makers are reversing course and so suddenly investing in electric vehicles is because Tesla didn't stop with the model S. Tesla boldly announced intentions to sell EVs for the masses and put billions towards this goal in the form of the gigafactory, Fremont expansion, work force expansion, and charger network expansion. The huge positive response to the planned model III is confirmation that the strategy is working. The heavy investment has forced a paradigm shift in the automotive world. That is exactly what Musk wanted to happen.
The current development and expansion costs are huge. That is why the company is not currently profitable. Despite what short sellers and critics say, it's not that the company, the cars (S and X), or EVs in general are unprofitable. The path to profitability is to gradually shift the ratio towards selling more cars and investing a smaller percentage of revenue into development. Whether that will happen is uncertain. But there is a path to get there. A successful model III launch is obviously important.
GM, VW group, and the other legacy automakers already have a lot of the infrastructure, work force, and experience in place from decades of investment. They can and should build great EVs. Tesla does not have these legacy advantages. They've had to build from scratch. They could have tried to build up slowly so as not to burn through cash so quickly, but then they would have been at least a decade behind where they are now. You gotta give credit to Tesla. Cars like the Bolt are proof that Tesla is succeeding.